


Fairly Rare and Very Unstable

by dexwebster



Category: Real Genius (1985)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-09
Updated: 2011-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:31:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dexwebster/pseuds/dexwebster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What can I say? I like the idea of having something to hang over your head, Mitch. It means we can never lose touch."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairly Rare and Very Unstable

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Yuletide 2005, for rusalka.

September, 1985

When he was growing up, Mitch was better friends with the laws of physics than he was with other kids. They were constant—they didn't call them laws for nothing. On Earth, the acceleration due to gravity operated at approximately 9.81 m/s2 (well, more and less at the equator and poles respectively), but Mitch was standing flat on both feet and felt like he was falling much faster than that.

Nobody ever warned him that there were things that could negate the laws of physics, things that were so far outside the realm of possibility that their mere occurrence rendered his previous reality null and void.

Obviously they'd never met Chris Knight. Because an object tending to stay in motion or at rest according to inertia did not mean a kiss that never ended just because Mitch couldn't bring himself to stop.

"Chris," Mitch said.

Chris licked his lips. His own, that is. He was apparently done licking Mitch's for the moment. "Hmm?"

"You," Mitch floundered, "you like girls."

"To be fair," Chris said, "my laziness and opportunism overrides any possibility of an actual sexual orientation other than human and breathing. Also, I've got a virgin kink. So it's nothing personal, believe me."

"I'm not a virgin."

"I knew it! You _did_ have sex with Jordan." Chris put his hand under his chin. "It's like doing the Energizer bunny, isn't it? I've always wondered."

"Chris!"

"And you've already got the yelling my name thing down."

"My parents, Chris, they'd flip."

"Because you're just the model of parental expectations otherwise." Chris shook him by the shoulders. "You're brilliant, Mitch! It's your duty to be eccentric and engage in all kinds of sordid sexual acts! When you're fifty and talking at a bunch of undergrads at MIT as part of some—some Nobel Prize winners' lecture series, you can say that you weren't one of those stuffy kids. You were lifelong friends with Chris Knight, who died tragically young after an unfortunate incident with a lawn chair and a bunch of helium balloons, and together you not only made great strides in science, but also had fantastic sex."

Mitch rolled his eyes. "Oh, that will go over real well in the science community."

"Then do it for me. What can I say? I like the idea of having something to hang over your head, Mitch. It means we can never lose touch."

Mitch almost commented on the creepiness of that, but it was touching in a weird way. Only Chris could make the threat of blackmail sound like a nice thing to do to someone. "Wait, how can you blackmail me for something you were doing too?"

Chris shrugged. "I'll be dead, what does it matter to me?"

"But if you're dead then you won't need to blackmail me."

"I could fake my own death."

"Why would you fake your death?"

"The top secret research project I was working on was compromised and I was forced to go into hiding?" Chris said, then, "huh." He looked like the idea actually appealed to him.

Then he looked a little more serious. "Look. Mitch," he said, "you need to relax, or face the very real possibility that you will end up in an I-Love-Me suit before you turn twenty."

"A what?"

"An I-Love-Me suit. All white, looks sort of like this." Chris pulled his hands into his sleeves and wrapped them around his sides so they looked like a straightjacket. "I'm only trying to save you from yourself here. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Mitch—" Chris put a sleeved hand awkwardly on Mitch's shoulder, "—but you just don't look that good in white."

Mitch eyed Chris' hand, but smiled. "I'm glad to know you think so highly of my well-being."

"Well I'm glad to know that you're glad that I think so highly of your well-being."

"I'm glad—" Mitch started, then laughed. "I'm not even gonna try."

"I actually do, you know. It's a little embarrassing." Chris' sleeve slipped back from his hand as he moved it over, thumb brushing the side of Mitch's neck.

Mitch's breath shuddered. "I do too."

"Think highly of your well-being?" Chris said. "That's good. That's a good quality to have, Mitch. We call that a healthy sense of self-preservation." His hand spread over the back of Mitch's neck.

"Chris."

"Yeah."

"Thank you."

"For?"

"Saving me from myself," Mitch said against Chris' mouth. "I never liked white much anyway."

 

September, 1986

"Oh, dear," Jordan said very quietly, quietly enough that Mitch and Chris didn't hear her over the sounds of sheets and shirts and jeans rubbing together and that little sound Mitch was—"Oh, dear," she said again, louder, and Mitch lifted his head from where it had been pressed against Chris' throat.

"Jordan," he said, and then he took one step backwards off the bed (and Chris) and fell on his butt, tangled in the sheets.

"Hi, Mitch," Jordan said, "I just brought you that rack I told you I was gonna make, you know, for your cartridges, but you're busy, so I'll come back later."

"Jordan, wait," Mitch said, and Jordan left.

By the time Mitch got his ankles out of the blankets and his shoes on and had babbled something at Chris, Jordan was long gone. She wasn't in her room, but he should've known better than to even bother checking there, because this was Jordan after all: she was smarter than that. He found her in the engineering labs—or at least he hoped it was her; there were three people welding, but only one who looked vaguely girl-shaped under the coveralls.

"Hello?" Mitch knocked on the open door. "Jordan?" There was a muffled sound from behind the welding mask. "Can I talk to you for a minute?" Another sound. Mitch laughed a little. "Can I see your face while I do it?"

Jordan lifted the mask, frowning fretfully.

"I guess you probably want to know what was going on back there."

"I do," Jordan said, "I mean, not that I need you to tell me, but that I do know, because it's pretty self-explanatory, and there are only so many permutations, but I," she waved a hand, "Is that why. I mean. I know we agreed we'd be better, you know, as friends, but is it that you—are you—"

"You mean? No, no, I'm not—gay, it's just..."

"Chris?"

"Yeah," Mitch laughed, relieved. He was bizarrely glad it was Jordan that had walked in on them. If you didn't know Chris, you couldn't understand how that made sense, how the world sort of warped around him to do strange and wonderful things like fill your evil professor's house with popcorn and make you have sex.

"Yeah," Jordan said.

"So you're okay with this?"

"I definitely am not not-okay with it. I mean, I definitely _am_ okay. I'm more than okay." She frowned. "Maybe a little too okay," she added, almost to herself, mouth drawing up tight, "but that's not really what you're asking."

"Okay." Mitch hugged her, awkwardly. "Okay. I, uh." He pointed towards the door. "I'm gonna go."

Chris sat in Mitch's desk chair with his feet stretched out on Mitch's bed. His shirt was still unbuttoned, and he was reading one of Mitch's textbooks. He cocked an eyebrow when Mitch came in. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Mitch said. "She, uh—" And then Mitch didn't get to say anything else, because Chris pounced.

Mitch turned his head, pulled away from the hand fiddling with the button of his jeans. "Chris, don't you think we should talk about this or something?"

"Everything's okay, right?"

"I—yeah." Mitch laughed nervously. "I think she liked it, actually."

"And you're okay?" Chris said with exaggerated patience.

"Mildly traumatized, but other than that."

"Then what is there to talk about?"

Mitch tried to protest again that they needed to talk or _something_. Maybe freak out a little bit that his ex-girlfriend had just walked in on him rubbing embarrassingly against Chris. But it was hard to talk when he couldn't even breathe because there was a hand insinuating itself cleverly into his pants (and of course it was—as if any part of Chris could ever do anything not clever), and in Mitch's defense, he was a teenager, and Chris' bare chest was right there and his tongue was _amazing_.

 

September, 1987

"I'm going to work with a team in England."

Mitch blinked. "Wow. that's great. When does it start?"

"Next week."

"That's...sudden." Mitch frowned. "How long have you known?"

Chris shrugged. "A few months," he said, too casually.

"How many is a few."

"Since May."

"You _asshole_ ," Mitch said, but he was the one that drove Chris to the airport nine days later.

 

Chris had a suitcase in his hand, a duffle bag thrown over his shoulder, and his sunglasses on. Mitch wasn't going to make a scene, and he wasn't going to cry.

"Here." Mitch tucked a folded five dollar bill into the pocket of the Hawaiian shirt Chris had on. Chris' mouth twisted and his eyebrow lifted. "Now you owe me five bucks," Mitch said. "As long as I've got something to hang over your head, we can never lose touch, right?"

"Absolutely." Chris smiled, wide and satisfied. "Where else would you get all of your lines but me?"

"I'll see you, I guess," Mitch said. He waved awkwardly as Chris walked away, and got into the car.

 

September, 1988

"You're John, right? Dr. Ryan's told me a lot about you."

According to Dr. Ryan, Mitch's advisor, his new freshman roommate was brilliant, but he'd had some problems with authority in high school, and Dr. Meredith had handpicked Mitch to room with him because he thought he'd a good influence on the boy. Boy. Like Mitch was any older than he was.

"Yeah. You're my roommate?"

"No, I actually graduated last semester, but I didn't want to bother moving all my stuff into an apartment, so I figured I'll just stick around until they realize I'm here and kick me out. I'm kidding, I'm kidding." He stuck his hand out. "I'm Mitch Taylor."

John shook it, but looked skeptical. "I thought Dr. Ryan said I'd be rooming with a senior."

Mitch laughed, a little self-consciously. "I am a senior." John smiled back. He didn't look like he believed that either. "No really," Mitch said. "I started when I was fifteen."

"Oh."

Mitch didn't say anything. Neither did John. Two shy geeks standing in a room never got any less awkward, did it?

"So, uh, I guess I should show you around then, right?" Mitch said.

John looked grateful that he hadn't had to talk first. "Yeah, that would probably be good." He stood up, ready to follow Mitch out the door. "Hey, is that an Amiga?"

Mitch looked over his shoulder at the computer sitting on his desk. He'd bought it with the money he made from tutoring high school kids over the summer. "Mostly," he said. The summer after he bought it, he spent all of his tutoring money getting his hands on parts to modify it.

"Wait a second. Mitch Taylor." John's eyebrows drew together in concentration for a minute, like there was something he needed to remember, before realization dawned. "You're the kid who blew a hole in the Bradford statue with the laser."

Mitch blushed and looked down quickly to lock the door. "It was my best friend, really," he said. The incident with the laser had achieved urban legend status in the summer between Mitch's first and second semesters, and now with the repair of the statue and everyone else having graduated, he was the last link left on campus. He had groupies. It made him nervous.

They walked down the hallway, past where Mitch had helped rebuild a car in Kent's room three years before. "If you want the good stories," he said, smiling, "just wait until you meet Chris."


End file.
